


Applied Chemistry

by Mad_Maudlin



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Baking, Birthday, Cake, Gen, Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-12
Updated: 2011-04-12
Packaged: 2017-10-17 23:24:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/182454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mad_Maudlin/pseuds/Mad_Maudlin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Happy birthday, John Watson.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Applied Chemistry

Part of the problem with having a birthday on the first day of April was that John could never be entirely confident in the division between genuine thoughtful gifts and elaborate pranks. People he'd known long enough tended to get tired of the coincidence after a few years—except for Harry, who seemed like she never would—but there was always the off chance that a passing acquaintance or casual friend would notice the date for the first time and be unable to resist.

Sherlock, of course, had worked it out somehow—John truly didn't want to know how—and didn't seem to care; since the only holidays he actively celebrated were Christmas and Guy Fawkes' Day (gifts and explosions, what a surprise) John wasn't anticipating any recognition of the date in any capacity. He knew Sherlock well enough at this point to understand the difference between obliviousness and willful ignorance, and birthdays clearly fell in the latter category.

So he was bit alarmed and entirely unprepared when he got home from lunch with Harry to discover smoke pouring out of the windows of 221B.

He broke into a run as he was dialing his phone, and fumbled with his keys one-handed while chanting under his breath some mixture of _fuck_ and _christ_ and _Sherlock._ Whose phone, incidentally, booted him straight to voicemail. (Sherlock's, not Christ's.) But by then the door was open onto a smoke-free ground floor—thank God today was Mrs. Hudson's French class at the senior center—and John nearly dropped his phone as he barreled up the stairs, shouting now rather than chanting. "Sherlock! Fuck, _Sherlock!"_

 _"What?"_

The sitting room was full of smoke; a haze of it lingered in the kitchen. Sherlock was standing by the windows with the source of the blaze—what appeared to be a bundt pan full of charcoal. He glared at John as he fanned the smoldering contents of the pan with a tea towel. "Oh, of course, _you._ We need to move out. I am convinced there is a curse upon this kitchen."

John, who was still torn between relief at seeing that Sherlock was not dead or grievously injured and the absurdity of seeing Sherlock with a cake pan (and was he wearing an apron?) looked into the kitchen automatically. There was _something_ upon the kitchen, all right—flour, mostly. Several different types, in fact, judging by the multi-colored bags lined up along one side of the table. Eggshells littered the floor as well, flowing out of the bin along with bags of confectioner's sugar and butter wrappers. Three entire cartons of milk stood empty on the seat of a chair. Various cans of frosting were visible, some scraped empty and some nearly full; gobs of the stuff were smeared artfully about, in several shades of chocolate.

John looked back at Sherlock, who, yes, was wearing an apron—the black rubber kind used for chemical experiments, to match the gloves that went up to his elbows. He was also liberally dusted with flour, and a small amount of soot, which created an odd tiger-stripe effect on his face, and now that John was not panicking the thing in the bundt pan looked much less like charcoal briquettes and more like a homogenous, if lumpy, mass.

"Sherlock," John said slowly, "were you baking a cake?"

"I baked _nine_ cakes," Sherlock announced, scowling at the smoke still trailing off the bundt pan. "It's applied chemistry. It's not supposed to be _difficult."_

John hesitantly investigated the kitchen, mindful of an intact egg rolling about on the floor. Behind the screen of flour bags, he found nearly every bowl they owned (including a few that had been recently used to house tissue samples) smeared with brown or golden batter of different consistency. Beyond those were a few round or rectangular pans, clearly holding the other eight failed cakes: some were burnt, some were pallid and barely set, and some managed to be both in different spots. Sherlock had staked three different recipes to the cupboards with steak knifes and had clearly been adding editorial commentary in red marking pen while he worked. The sink...John wasn't going to look at the sink right now.

"Right," he said. "Nine cakes. _Why?"_

Sherlock mumbled something; he had begun prodding the ruined cake with the end of a knife.

"Why the sudden urge to bake, Sherlock?" John asked. "Is it for a case or something? Death by chocolate taken a bit too literally?"

"It was for you," Sherlock said in a small voice.

John blinked. "What, like a joke?"

"No!" Sherlock looked petulant; the clean rings around his eyes made them look larger. "Why would I do that?"

"It is April Fool's Day," John pointed out.

"Oh. Of course. Irrelevant." Sherlock dropped the bundt pan in the bin, where it promptly bounced off the pile of accumulated rubbish and onto the floor. "It is also your _birthday."_

Oh. _Oh!_ John fought down a laugh. "You're trying to make me a birthday cake?"

Sherlock was remarkably good at avoiding eye contact when he put his mind to it. "I have been lead to understand that it's a more personal gesture than purchasing one."

"And you're interested in making personal gestures, why, exactly?" John asked. "Don't get me wrong, I appreciate that you're acknowledging it, I just wasn't expecting to come to a mixture of _Ace of Cakes_ and _Frankenstein."_

With a sigh befitting a romance-novel heroine, Sherlock slumped against the counter and folded his rubber-gloved arms over his rubber-aproned chest. He squeaked. "Your previous birthday was...suboptimal," he declared, as if the OED had declared _suboptimal_ to mean _beset by sociopaths and explosives; also, of or relating to near-death experiences._ "You put a great deal of effort into recognizing the birthdays of others, so clearly it's a custom you value; ergo, I thought I might extend the same recognition to you."

"That...may possibly be the nicest thing you've said to me recently," John admitted.

"Really?" Sherlock looked genuinely surprised.

"I know you don't believe in idiotic aphorisms, but sometimes it's the thought that counts." John looked at the cake wreckage smeared across the kitchen. "That, and cleaning up after yourself."

"Naturally," Sherlock said, in the tone that meant _you'll have to lock me in and make me._ "As soon as I'm finished."

John raised an eyebrow. "Tenth time's the charm, is it?"

Sherlock sniffed. "I'm quite certain I've got it sorted now. You weren't supposed to be back until tea time anyway. Was Harry that drunk already?"

"I think I could've handled her longer if she had been," John said. He considered offering Sherlock a hand, but Sherlock just lowered a pair of goggles onto his face, and he decided that, honestly, it was probably best if he kept out of this one.

A moment later, the smoke alarms began to wail.


End file.
